Hot topics in November

From rooftop to rooftop

When Zico Correa leaps along and above the streets of Brazil he doesn’t really feel like a human being – more like a monkey or a leopard. In a spectacular video, the parkour artist shows us around the favela Morro dos Prazeres

Zico Correa doesn’t really need streets to get around: – as a parkour enthusiast his preferred method of getting from A to B is to avoid anything straightforward or flat. Parkour athletes ignore roads and paths; instead, they run, jump, leap and even fly with acrobatic movements over fences, walls and roofs. Parkour originally began in France in the 1980s and since then has become popular all over the world. The idea is to reclaim the urban space by interacting with it in an individual way. Zico Correa , 31, vaults and leaps around the favela Morro dos Prazeres, where the project Caminho do Grafite (graffiti road) was launched in November 2013: Street artists have made the neighborhood more colorful and hence also more interesting for tourists with their vividly colored art. For Zico this “playground” is the ideal place to practice parkour: colorful, full of corners and ledges, and just a little bit chaotic.